Crispy.

I think I said previously that I have gotten in the habit of roasting things. Did I say that previously? Because I should have. I like to roast things. Or, maybe more accurately, I like to cook as much of my dinner as I can in the oven, so I can do other things while that is happening. Like go to the bathroom.

Seriously. I come home from work, throw things in the oven and then go to the bathroom, change into sweats, find my clothes for the next day, find some pajamas, give the cat her meds, wash my hands and then finish dinner. So, anything that can happen in between throwing something in the oven and washing my hands is good. Very good. Anything that makes dinner easier and faster…very, very good.

So a lot of things get thrown in the oven these days. Most veggies get roasted. I love asparagus, but roasted asparagus? Perfection. Don’t like Brussels sprouts. Roasted? They are awesome. Roasted cauliflower stinks while it’s roasting but tasted great, especially the browned bits and roasted broccoli works great, even with frozen broccoli. So the newest veggie to get chucked in the oven was kale.

Kale is bit of a tricky one. I like it, most of the time. But it’s got a strong flavor and if I am not in the mood…eh. Boiling it just never seems to do the trick, steaming it doesn’t seem to cook it enough and sautéing it used to be the best option. That is, until last night when I roasted it. The husband declared it a keeper and we ate a whole pan of it as a topping to baked potatoes.

Here’s what I did:

Preheated oven to 450°

Washed and spun one smallish bunch of kale dry…actually, I do this backward. I usually cut the kale (lettuce, greens, cabbage, whatever) first, then put them in a salad spinner and wash and dry them. Is that bad? I wash the cutting board and knife before using them again, in case the greens were contaminated, but it just makes more sense to me…anyway…kale is cut into about 1” strips and washed and dried.

Then I put it on a baking sheet and drizzled it with olive oil and tossed it around a bit to coat. You want a fairly healthy covering here, so if you are concerned with fat, this probably isn’t much better than frying or sautéing. But it’s olive oil, so your skin will be smooth and your coat will be nice and glossy.

Chuck the whole mess in the oven for about 10 to 14 minutes. Check it at ten and see what you think. It should still be very green but the edges may start to get brown. That’s about where you want it. Too much brown is bad. Black is also probably not good.
Take it out of the oven and turn the oven off…because I always forget that part.

Drizzle with a little tiny bit more oil, just a little bit and sprinkle liberally with sea salt or kosher salt. I don’t want to be all fancy here, but they do work better as finishing salts because they have a “softer” taste and we’re all about the soft taste over here.

We put the kale on top of baked potatoes and it was good. Like really good. It’s crispy, and almost like a really thin potato chip, only made from kale. And I could eat these leafy greens like chips, just put ‘em on a plate and munch away, they were that good.

I was going to draw you a picture of my potato with kale topping but…that sounded like work, so I didn’t. Here’s a worried tiger instead…